Elizabeth Wein, author of the critically-acclaimed and best-selling Code Name Verity, delivers another stunning WWII thriller. The unforgettable story of Rose Justice is forged from heart-wrenching courage, resolve, and the slim, bright chance of survival.
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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful.
Powerful
By Valerie A. Baute
Rose Justice is an American pilot for the ATA during WWII. She is captured and sent to an all women concentration camp, Ravensbruck. Just like all concentration camp stories, Rose is in for a very horrible and difficult time. Told through her journal from before and after the concentration camp, mostly after, we get an intimate look at life inside the camp, learning to live afterward, and even a glimpse at the trials that took place once the war was over.Rose Under Fire is a companion to Code Name Verity. You do not have to read Verity to understand this book, but I think everyone should read it anyway. Maddie is back in this one as Rose's friend. Some people in Maddie's past are referenced, but you aren't told what happened. If I were reading this book without having read Verity, I would absolutely want to go back and see what happened in Verity. There are a lot more surprises in Verity that might not be as shocking if Rose is read first.I felt that Verity was a more powerful story, but I enjoyed reading this one more. I do have a soft spot for concentration camp stories, and it made it even better that this was fictional. I could really get into the characters and root for all of them, but at least I know in my heart that the specific casualties were fictitious. Verity was full of technical information about airplanes, so much that I found myself skimming over those parts. That was definitely not the case this time. Rose's flying passion was part of her, but it didn't take over the story. There was a lot of poetry this time, something else Rose was passionate about. I am not a big fan of poetry within stories. It didn't ruin the book for me, as I understand that her poetry was necessary in keeping the morale up for so many girls in the camp.Wein did a wonderful job portraying life in a concentration camp. She developed the characters so amazingly, and the story was detailed, accurate, believable, and compelling. I was not shocked by it, as I have read plenty of biographies from concentration camp survivors, but I still learned from it. Before this story, I had never heard of the Ravensbruck "Rabbits."Thankfully there is quite a bit of closure in this story. I am not left wondering who survived and who did not. There are so many emotions that ran through me while reading: sorrow, happiness, disappointment, hope and anger just to name a few. Any book that can give me so many emotions and make it almost impossible for me to put down is a definite winner.Free ARC provided through NetGalley
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful.Gut-wrenching, Hopeful, and So Worth It
By Maggie
I don't think I've ever cried so much while reading a book. Elizabeth Wein is a genius. Honestly, I can't think of any other way to describe her. Code Name Verity was one of my favorite books of last year and Rose Under Fire will undoubtedly be one of my favorite books of this year. I've always been a fan of historical fiction, but Wein's ability to bring these stories to life is just completely above and beyond other historical fiction that's out there (although Ruta Sepetys gives her a run for her money).Rose is an 18-year-old American pilot who is working for the Air Transport Auxiliary in England. She pretty much flies planes around England moving them from one location to another whether it's for repair (I loved the story of her freezing to death flying a plane with a hole in the windshield) or because it's needed somewhere else. She's stationed in the same location as Maddie Broddart from Code Name Verity and it was so nice to see what Maddie, and Jamie, were up to.The story takes place after D-Day, which, as a lover of history I am ashamed to say, surprised me. I guess I always think of D-Day as the end of the war and it's crazy to me that all these terrible things happened for more than a year after D-Day. Rose dreams of flying to Europe and eventually her uncle, who has a powerful job with the British military, gets her over there. I loved her descriptions of Paris after the war, it was really powerful getting to see it through her eyes the first time she was there. When Rose is flying back to England from Paris she gets taken off course and captured by Germans.Honestly, at this point in the book I thought I was going to have to go to the end and read what happens. I was just so anxious about what was going to happen to Rose. I knew from the description that she gets taken to the Ravensbrück Concentration Camp and I couldn't deal with not knowing what happened to her. Would she be tortured? Experimented on? Raped? I just needed to know. Right before I reached the end of my rope, pretty much right after Rose is captured, the story picks up with Rose in Paris again, in 1945, having made it safely to Paris after being held at Ravensbrück for six months. I don't think I'm spoiling anything by saying this, it's so early in the book, and I actually think it's helpful to know that whatever happens next she ends up alive and somewhere safe.But that didn't make reading the rest of the book any easier. I kept hoping against hope while reading that Rose somehow led a quiet, not too menacing life at Ravensbrück, but obviously that wasn't going to be the case. I'm not going to go into too many details, because I think that's part of reading the book, but it was an enlightening and heartbreaking read.At Ravensbrück Rose is assigned to a barrack with many of the "rabbits," the group of women the Nazis "experimented" on by doing things like stripping all the muscle from someone's calf or purposefully infecting someone with gangrene and not treating it to see how it healed. I had known that these things happened there and the actual acts themselves didn't shock me, but having the acts associated with characters that I came to really care about made me so angry.Besides Rose, who I loved and I'll talk about next, these characters that we meet at Ravensbrück were what made the story for me. Rose herself says that she was only at Ravensbrück for six months, but some of these other women were there for years. Hearing how they managed to survive on meager food rations and little sleep was just dumbfounding. And then hearing about their hope, that was what really killed me. I don't cry at abuse or death, I cry at hope. And the hope that these women had was so inspiring. The rabbits wanted the world to know how they had been mistreated and the ways that they went about trying to get the world out were so creative and brave and heart wrenching. Not to mention how they banded together and were just so selfless.It's impossible for me not to compare Rose with Verity and Maddie from Code Name Verity and I don't want to say that I liked Rose better, but I just related to her in a way that I couldn't with Verity and Maddie. Rose is such an all American girl and I loved that. I loved that she could have been (but thankfully wasn't) one of my grandmothers or their friends. I loved her memories of Pennsylvania and her dad's airfield and the sleeping porch in the summer. I loved that she was the captain of the county champion girls' basketball team. But most of all I loved her memories of Hershey, PA (a place my family visited often when I was a kid) and the Hotel Hershey and the meals there and how the valley used to smell like cocoa. Those were the saddest parts of the book for me and the parts that just made me bawl (like I'm doing right now as I'm writing this). I also loved that Rose never felt sorry for herself, I guess she was fighting so hard to just make it through she didn't have the time or energy for self-pity, but even after she was safe in Paris she wanted to acknowledge what happened and move on while making the best of it, not feel sorry for herself.There is one totally selfish thing I would change about this book. I wish we knew more about how Rose's family reacted to what happened to her and about what happened to Rose later in her life. I wanted an epilogue that talked about how she went on to have a successful career and met a nice man and got married and had kids and now has a lovely granddaughter who's my age and she lives a happy retired life at 87-years-old with her amazing husband and does volunteer work and takes yoga (I made her into my grandmother at the end, but you know what I mean). But it's not that kind of book and I'm ok with that, but I'm still going to imagine that's what happened to Rose.Bottom Line: Seriously just go read this book. It's just phenomenal. It's a brilliant story of a brave American girl and the horrors that not just the Nazis, but war in general, inflict on people. But Elizabeth Wein's brilliant writing and amazing ability to tell stories make it so relatable and so hopeful that you can't help but love it.I received an electronic review copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley (thank you!). All opinions are my own.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
Like it… kinda
By busbedhev
You guys have no idea how excited I was to read 'Rose Under Fire' after loving 'Code Name Verity', especially after finding out it was a companion novel (meaning characters from CNV would appear). So when I started this book I couldn't help comparing it to its predecessor and from the very beginning I discovered that even though it'd been written by the same author, it had another feeling.Old characters make appearances (and I couldn't help grinning and fangirling with everything that happens with them) but the narrative and the main character's voice was different. Actually, the first time I picked this book I had a hard time connecting with Rose, so I took a break and didn't pick it up until today. And I am glad I waited because I enjoyed it more this second time and Elizabeth Wein's writing made me feel as if I was a witness of everything that was happening. I felt the cruelty and injustice these women received, their pain and their happiness, their despair and hope.And still, a part of me couldn't connect with Rose. And I did shed some tears but I didn't cry my eyes out like I did with CNV. I didn't love it but I liked it… somewhat. More because of the relationships between Rose and the supporting characters that Rose herself. Because it was in those moments when they were saying goodbye or losing hope or winning it again that I felt for them and I loved them.
